Microsoft Announces Pricing For New Cloud Services

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And memo to small and midsize businesses; take a look, because it will be competitive.

Microsoft's coming cloud subscription service, Azure, will be available come November. It's now only available by invitation only through its Community Technology Preview program.

Here's what the pricing structure will look like:

1. Azure's OS will rent out at .12 cents per computing hour...
2. and/or .15 cents a month per gigabyte...
3. and/or .10 cents for every 10,000 storage transactions...
4. There's also a flat SQL starter rate at $9.95 a month.
5. The business edition has a capacity of up to 10 gigabytes and goes for $99 a month.

Interesting foot note; the City of Chicago is already using Azure. Windy City - cloud computing; there's a punch line in there somewhere. I'll let you make your own today.

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio